In the medical field, screening tests are used to evaluate a population of people for a specific disease without anyone being known as having any symptoms or signs related to the specific disease for which they are being tested. In other words, a screening test hunts for a disease before it starts producing any symptoms. There are numerous techniques which exist in the field for examining physiology of a patient for screening purposes.
With respect to certain cancers, such as breast cancer which is the second leading cause of cancer deaths in women today, the most accepted testing procedure remains mammography with about 44 million procedures and 1.2 million breast biopsies performed in the United States a year. This is an invasive and painful procedure and although fairly reliable, does produce false positives and negatives.
The migration and diffusion of energy transfer through tissue is a function its physiological state and tissue properties that can display images of physiological parameters, which can be early markers of tumor/cancer development. Cancerous regions within normal tissue display substantially different physiology from normal tissue due to their primitive cell physiology. These abnormal regions have angiogenesis and higher degrees of metabolic rates when compared to normal tissue. The physiological differences will result in a change in thermal activity that can be detected and measured in tomographic data.
Thermal screening of the human body has been employed for many years as a means to screen for abnormalities in humans and animals. Thermal screening, much like x-ray (mammograms) screening, is an interpretation of the image data, performed by a skilled person, based on densities, physical characteristics and location in the case of x-rays or thermal patterns in the case of thermographic screening. In the case of x-ray screening, the determination to start this process is based on a risk/benefit of the procedure as x-ray employs ionizing radiation as a means for deriving the image that is cumulative within tissue and can damage DNA strands resulting in abnormal tissue growth. Tomography is a technique using ultrasound, gamma rays, or X-rays to produce a focused image of structures across a certain depth within the body, while blurring details at other depths of the body. A topographic image is traditionally associated with a mapping technique that displays elevation and contour.
Thermographic screening has the benefit of being a totally passive technology however the current techniques and methodologies lack effectiveness. In the case of the mammary gland, metabolic changes result in increased thermal activity in the gland during the menstruation cycle. A deficiency of thermographic imaging is the requirement that infrared radiation be observed at angles normal to the surface when viewed by the thermal array as thermal radiation is normal to the surface. This requires multiple images of the area being observed and repositioning the thermal array. Consequently, thermal acquisition errors result due to the off angle of the energy being emitted. Depending on the geometry of the area being imaged the off angle radiation can be substantial.
The present invention addresses the need for a controlled environment, emissivity corrections and actual tissue relating to body mass. At present this biophysical imaging technique is performed in a two dimensional world. However, when imaging the human body's infrared radiation and measuring the heat transfer we are attempting to solve a three-dimensional problem in a two dimensional world. Currently, there has not been produced a way for processing the observed data at a theoretical and primary level. Without question all current thermal imaging techniques are flawed.
There remains a need for a less invasive yet more reliable screen testing procedure for certain physiological tissue such as cancers, particularly breast cancer.